That statesman was fully aware that all those changes which I have enumerated come about by an undeviating law of nature; and reflected that every form of government that was unmixed, and rested on one species of power, was unstable; because it was swiftly perverted into that particular form of evil peculiar to it and inherent in its nature...

This participle looks like it is intransitive. So why is it first perfect and not second perfect? Polybius actually uses both forms in these pages. In another location, he uses the second perfect participle intransitively. LSJ give both forms alas without much elaboration of their differences. Mastronarde doesn't list this first perfect form explicitly, but on second reading he does leave room for it. It seems that the differences should follow those for the two aorists.

Qimmik wrote:The second perfect is generally intransitive. The first perfect is intransitive in the meaning "to stand," but can be used transitively in the meaning "to set." See LSJ ἵστημι I

a) I'm sorry. I don't know where in that LSJ entry you are pointing. Roman numeral I covers the transitive meaning. Where is the intransitive for the first perfect covered? Can you just cut and paste the relevant bit?

b) What about Polybius? 1st perfect but intransitive?

Last edited by pster on Sat Jun 01, 2013 2:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

NateD26 wrote:one would be forgiven in assuming that κ would not be the mark of its "1st perfect"

I don't follow. kappa is the usual mark of 1st perfects, so why would one forgive somebody who does not assume that?

Why do you read and quote just half of the sentence? If it's a mi verb, I would assume its perfect does not have kappa, hence why I assumedits 1st perfect is kappa-less, and its 2nd is not.

Why does it matter that it is an mi verb? The perfect form is not an mi form. And as it turns out, mi forms all have kappa in the pefect anyway. Maybe it is me, but I have no idea what you are thinking.

I read misread the passage as καὶ μίαν συνεστηκὸς δύναμιν, which could mean "having firmly established a single source of power" rather than "standing [or resting] firmly on a single source of power."

OK, so then we don't really have any LSJ passage to substantiate reading it intransitively? Is that correct?

I actually think you are right, but I just want to get clear on what we know.

You were the first to impress upon me that Polybius isn't a very careful writer. And there is another passage where he uses both the active and the middle in the same way even though LSJ barely support his doing so. I noticed today that Walbank points out the possible tension, but then quickly moves onto more interesting puzzles.

ἵστημι II.1 (in the introductory morphological discussion); see also B.II.2 for the intransitive use, "to stand".

See also συνίστημι B.IV, and the morphological detail under B. B.IV is more or less the sense that is required in the Polybius passage, although perhaps the pre-verb συν- just distinguishes the verb from the literal sense of ἑστηκώς, "stand" or intensifies its meaning (that's what I tried to capture using "firmly").

Nate, you were right about this:

In most places I've stumbled into, however, ἑστηκώς has intransitive present meaning of "to stand".

Thanks Qimmik. I was curious what （ meant. So I went to the archive.org version of LSJ which I guess is older. I think it is just a parenthesis. But they originally said, "part. ἑστώς (ἑστηκώς rare in the best writers Gr., Hdt.2.126, Pl.Men.93d..." Polybius I might understand, but Plato! Haha.

I suspect that usage fluctuated more than modern grammars and dictionaries suggest.

A modern English analogy: many English speakers, even educated speakers in everyday speech, use "laid," the preterite and past participle of transitive "lay", as the preterite and past participle of intransitive "lie," instead of "lay", "lain". Prescriptive grammars and usage manuals tell us that this is wrong, but there were no prescriptive textbooks available in Polybius' day to tell them that using the first perfect of ἵστημι intransitively (except for the indicative singular forms) was wrong. It didn't become "wrong" until grammars established "correct" usage, based on the "best" Attic authors.

Adding to the interchangeability of the transitive first perfect and intransitive second perfect forms must have been the absence of separate singular indicative second perfect forms of ἵστημι, for which the first perfect forms were used.

We might carry this discussion further by trying to discover in what contexts Polybius uses the second perfect forms, but that would be a waste of time better spent reading more Greek.